


Hide My Face In My Hands

by gevaudan



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 22:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6676987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gevaudan/pseuds/gevaudan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The newspaper lay on the table in front of him, the stark black and white words burning through closed eyelids, shielded from the world by slender fingers,  to sear themselves on his brain.</p><p>'HOLT, Eva. Formerly of New York. Aged 19 years.  Loving daughter of Randolf and Lucia.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hide My Face In My Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Songfic Challenge at Section VII - the song was Sting's Driven to Tears.

** Hide My Face in My Hands **

The newspaper lay on the table in front of him, the stark black and white words burning through closed eyelids, shielded from the world by slender fingers,  to sear themselves on his brain.

_'HOLT, Eva. Formerly of New York. Aged 19 years.  Loving daughter of Randolf and Lucia.'_

There had been other details below, a church service, private interment, times, dates, trivia, but it was that first line that he couldn't escape.

_'Aged 19 years. Loving daughter'._

 Was this what he had reduced her to? A few lines, printed in bad ink on cheap flimsy paper that would rot away before her family's memories of her had even begin to dull, before his memories had even moved away from the forefront of his mind.

He dropped his hands from his face, and picked up the paper once more, trying to ignore the tremble that sent shivers through the news sheet and the terrible, acrid, searing shame in his throat.

_'Aged 19 years.'_

The words repeated in his head, over and over like a metronome,  marking his subconscious indelibly as they did so, so that the number would forever send a shock through him wherever he saw it; on a bus, on a building, on an identity badge in the office. He would see the number in his dreams accompanied by the dreadful dull thud of her body hitting the hood of the car.

She wasn't the first person he had killed, nor the second or the third, in fact where she stood on his own personal tally chart made his blood run cold. But she was the first true innocent. She wasn't connected with his case, she wasn't an enemy agent to be defeated, or an obstacle he had no choice but to remove. She was a young woman, who spent one sunny Friday afternoon walking down the sidewalk. She was a friend who had turned to chat to her companion, taking a step off the kerb as she did so. She was a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, not expecting to  step into the path of the car he was driving as he pursued a Thrush operative in possession of a deadly neurotoxin.

And then she was simply dead, and the rest didn't matter.

There had been an investigation of course, while he was sitting silent and segregated in his empty apartment watching time pass second by agonising second, scouring the newspapers for words about his crime.

In the end he had been exonerated. The man they were chasing was armed with a weapon that could have devastated Manhattan and had the wherewithal  to use it, their only option was to pursue. Miss Holt had not looked, had taken her step at the most unfortunate of moments ending in the most horrific of outcomes.

Horrific, but not his fault.

Somehow he couldn't make his brain believe that, although he knew he had to.

There was a familiar knock at the door, a knock that meant he knew who was there without even moving.

He might not be able to forgive himself yet, he might never be able to, but so long as the person at the other side of the door still trusted him, was still his friend, his partner - then maybe, just maybe, there was a glimmer of hope that one day, his life would return to what passed for normal.

But he would still remember.

_'HOLT, Eva. Formerly of New York. Aged 19 years.  Loving daughter of Randolf and Lucia.'_


End file.
